Amy Kabel talks about the calendar of Lancaster fire fighters and their dogs that she's put together for the Hank Kabel Sarcoma Foundation. Hank was Amy's dog; he died in 2013 from sarcoma.(Photo: Matthew Berry/Eagle-Gazette)Buy Photo

LANCASTER - Amy Kabel has raised awareness of canine sarcoma ever her since her bullmastiff/rottweiler, Hank, died of the disease in 2014.

For the third straight year, Kabel has produced a calendar featuring the dog to raise money for the Hank Kabel Sarcoma Foundation. Called "Firefighters and Dogs," a 2013 photo of Hank and four city firefighters adorns the cover.

Inside, a member of the department is featured for each month, along with their dog in a city park. It also includes advertisements from numerous local businesses.

Last year's calendar highlighted Fairfield County Sheriff deputies and next year will feature police officers. The first calendar showed pictures of Hank from the numerous television news appearances he made.

"Sarcoma is a rare cancer of the connective tissue," Kabel said. "And actually, dogs get it five times more than people, and the second-most common is children. So it's a cancer that a lot of people don't know about because, No. 1, it's so rare. And it's not something that usually happens in adults."

Besides photos of the firefighters in uniform, the calendar also includes facts on canine cancer and human cancer.

"Someone's always going to advocate for children," Kabel said. "But not so much for the animals. So that's why I initially got involved because I wanted to bring awareness to the dogs. I'm also, through this, trying to bring awareness for the people as well."

Kabel said that through research, she found that firefighters are more prone than others to get cancer because of their jobs, to which Lt. K.J. Watts of the city fire department agreed. Watts is pictured in the calendar for July, posing with his German Shepherd-Sable named Cairo.

He said Kabel contacted the firefighters union president, who then found firefighters with dogs who were willing to be photographed over the summer.

"Firefighter cancer has never before been known to be so prevalent in fire departments," Watts said. "Firefighters have a higher rate than people in other jobs."

He said that is because of the carcinogens firefighters face when combating fires.